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A year ago Saturday, a federal grand jury in San Francisco first charged Barry Bonds with lying about his use of steroids and human growth hormone, and in the ensuing months, bits and pieces of the government's evidence have emerged during pretrial skirmishing. That evidence leaves little doubt Bonds used the drugs.

There are, for example, positive tests for two steroids, a drug calendar showing use of testosterone and HGH every Monday in December 2001, a receipt showing a purchase of a $1,500 supply of HGH for "off season" and "in season," and a former personal manager and a scorned girlfriend who say they saw what Bonds was doing and argued with him about it.

But Bonds' use of performance-enhancing drugs is only the first half of the case against him. The federal prosecutors must also show he lied about his use when he testified before a federal grand jury, and the government's case is less impressive in that area.

Although two prosecutors interrogated Bonds in the grand jury room and Bonds was there alone (his lawyers were barred from the room under federal rules), the prosecutors' questions were occasionally inept and allowed Bonds to avoid the kind of definitive answers that would be a solid foundation for a perjury charge.

In addition, Bonds has seen other encouraging developments in the courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston, where his trial is scheduled to begin March 2. In October, Illston did not order jail time for two others who were convicted of lying in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative investigation, former track coach Trevor Graham and cyclist Tammy Thomas. Instead, Illston sentenced them to only home confinement.

At this point, though, the federal prosecutors are a long way from any sentencing consideration for Bonds. They still are trying to draft an indictment that will properly define a perjury charge against him. Their imprecise questions and failures to follow up on Bonds' answers in the grand jury room continue to haunt them.

At one point during the Dec. 4, 2003, interrogation, Bonds managed to answer, "Whatever, dude," without any objection from the prosecutors, leaving the question unanswered. Even with total control of the grand jury proceeding, the prosecutors didn't force Bonds to give conclusive answers to several questions.

And despite the convincing evidence the prosecutors put in front of him, Bonds categorically denied that he knowingly used any performance-enhancing drugs.

The combination of the evidence and Bonds' denials looks a lot like perjury, but the garbled questions from the prosecutors and Bonds' elusive and evasive answers have made it difficult for the government to draft the perjury charges. When the indictment was returned Nov. 15, 2007, Bonds' team of six lawyers pounced, asserting that the federal prosecutors "labored for four years to finally produce a charging document of striking inartfulness." They were so stunned by the homely and awkward language of the indictment, they had to make up a new word -- "inartfulness" -- to describe it.

It is impossible to charge Bonds with perjury, his lawyers suggested in their motion to dismiss the indictment, when the questions asked of Bonds "were frequently imprecise, redundant, overlapping and frequently compound."

For example, when the prosecutors confronted Bonds with two positive drug tests, they did not ask him whether he had been tested for steroids. Nor did they ask him whether he had tested positive. Instead, they asked him whether he had taken steroids "or anything like that" and, in the same question, showed him the test papers.

The only answer they obtained from Bonds was, "I've never seen these documents."

That answer easily could be truthful. It is entirely possible Bonds could have used drugs provided by BALCO and his personal trainer, Greg Anderson, could have given blood and urine samples for tests at BALCO, and that Bonds could have never actually seen the documents showing the results.

Illston agreed with Bonds' legal team that the language in the initial charges was below the standard demanded of a perjury indictment and she dismissed them, allowing the government to try again with a superseding indictment.

The judge now is pondering another Bonds attack on the second attempt at an indictment. His legal team wants her to dismiss 10 of the 15 counts in what the government suggests is a new and improved statement of the charges. A decision could come at any time.

The federal prosecutors have avoided comment on their efforts to prepare proper charges against Bonds. The spokesman for the U.S. attorney in San Francisco, Joseph P. Russoniello, did not respond to several phone inquiries from ESPN.com.

Although federal prosecutors typically are able to avoid revealing their evidence before trial, they have been forced in this case to describe fragments of their evidence in their arguments with the Bonds legal team over the wording of the indictment. The positive test results, drug calendar and HGH receipt all have been described in court papers.

These bits of evidence are a prelude to what will be a powerful array of evidence at the trial that Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs. Federal agents, led by Jeff Novitzsky, gathered a mountain of material in the raids on BALCO and Anderson's home, in addition to the material they gathered in a year-long surveillance of the BALCO headquarters, which included gathering material each week from BALCO's garbage.

The receipt for the purchase of HGH, for example, bears exhibit number 503, an indication of the volume of the evidence gathered in the investigation.

The prosecutors' frustration with Bonds' slippery answers and their own failures to confront him on specific issues is clear in the indictment. In the final count of the series of charges, they abandon any attempt to describe a specific falsehood and include a non-specific, catch-all charge that Bonds' testimony to the grand jury was "intentionally evasive, false and misleading."

In other court papers, they assert that Bonds' testimony "as a whole" was "so evasive and perjurious that it constituted an obstruction of justice."

It might be true, as the prosecutors claim, that Bonds committed perjury before the grand jury. But American law requires a specific charge and a specific lie before any jury can consider a conviction.

And it might be true that the answers Bonds gave to the prosecutors' questions were evasive, but they are clear clues to the argument his lawyers will make to the jury that considers the charges against him.

In the first question described in the current version of the indictment, Bonds is asked, "To your knowledge, I mean, did you ever take any steroids that he [Anderson] gave you?"

"Not that I know of," Bonds replies in a Bill Clintonesque answer.

When the prosecutors attempted to raise the issue of his alleged use of the BALCO-produced steroid known as "the cream," a drug that was for a time undetectable, Bonds replied that Anderson had "rubbed some cream on my arm, like some lotion-type stuff."

His response to Anderson's offer of the cream, Bonds told the grand jury, was, "Like, whatever, dude."

It was just a lotion, Bonds suggested. "What's lotion going to do to me?" he asked in reply to the question.

In the face of charges of lying about steroid and HGH use, Bonds and his legal team will claim he did not know what the substances were. As Bonds told the grand jury, "Everyone tries to give me everything … " and Anderson "called it flaxseed oil."

Although he continues to embarrass federal prosecutors with his attacks on their abilities to form questions and to draft a proper indictment, it appears the trial will go forward and Bonds will face at least five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice.

He and his lawyers might be able to convince the jury that his evasive testimony falls short of perjury. And if he is convicted, he might be able to convince Illston that he does not belong in jail. She has said the real "miscreants" in the BALCO saga are the designers and sellers of the drugs rather than the users.

But even as Bonds' defense benefits from inept prosecutors and a lenient judge, the evidence of his drug use will be dramatic and will convince anyone with any remaining doubts about his use of performance-enhancing drugs and their role in his breaking of MLB's hallowed home run records.

Lester Munson, a Chicago lawyer and journalist who reports on investigative and legal issues in the sports industry, is a senior writer for ESPN.com.